A n unna m e d count r y
Pink Butterfly
“P
ink butterfly! Pink butterfly! Eat me! Eat me! Yum!” I chanted as I “flew” the spoonful of food to Niu’s now open mouth. She swallowed and giggled. “Purple this time!” she would shout after she swallowed the bite. We would go through the whole rainbow several times before her plate was empty. We even made up some colors like “sparkly rainbow” and “shiny pink and purple glitter.” The memories whirled through my mind as I sat, staring blankly at the white casket in front of me. All of a sudden life wasn’t making any sense. “Daddy Greg!” I heard her cheerful six-year old voice ringing as I pictured her running into his arms. They would laugh and giggle together as he scooped her up and swung her around in a big circle. I pictured her throwing her head back in delight, relishing the love and attention she was getting, love and attention she never really got even before her father was shot and killed several years before. Grandma told her to call us Mom and Dad. We took that seriously. She was our daughter, at least on Sabbaths. But now it was all gone. Our little Niu was lying lifeless in a white casket, wearing her favorite dress—the pink one we brought back from America on our last furlough. I kept running the events of the past three days through my mind. The 6 a.m. phone call from a missionary friend telling us that Niu was in the hospital. Traveling to the hospital where she was in the pediatric intensive care unit (PICU). The helpless look in her grandma’s eyes when we arrived. The lack of answers from the
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doctor and nurses. Consulting with an Adventist doctor in the capital city eight hours away. Respectfully but firmly asking the attending doctor to t r a n s fe r her to the teaching hospital two hours away only to see him shake his head and ask why we didn’t trust the care he was giving her. Speeding in the ambulance to the next big town and better hospital when the doctor finally told us we needed to transfer her. Watching the nurses perform CPR, unsuccessfully. Then the white casket. We had met little Niu at church a few years earlier. Abandoned by her mother when she was just weeks old, Niu was being raised by her Adventist grandmother. She was constantly sick. So we helped sort out all the medical reports and found that she had thalassemia, a blood disorder common in Southeast Asia that requires blood transfusions. We couldn’t be with Niu for her first transfusion, but the monthly ordeal never got any easier. She would cry and scream and beg Grandma to take her home. And it played on Grandma’s emotions. So either I or another missionary friend would accompany them to help calm
Top: Niu loved animals. Above left: Rainbow-colored cookies! Above: Niu “helping” Amy play the guitar. Below, left to right: Niu in the pediatric intensive care unit; Celebrating Niu’s short life; Niu’s aunt laying flowers on her casket.
